What’s something big happen on 4th of July? Maybe You’ll say it’s the independence day of United States. But for me and all of the interns to MACH from South East Asia, today is a big day as we are having a final presentation on a competition called Microsoft Protégé. Basically, Microsoft Protégé is a challenge for the entire intern to MACH to work in a team to generate ideas on how to market Microsoft Office 2010 to
university student in South East Asia. After a short briefing on mid of June, I have to team up with Zeffree Kan (Zeff) from Malaysia, and Sharifah Salmah Abdullah (Salome), also from Malaysia. We have a unique name: T.I.A.R.A, which stands for This Is A Random Acronym, as we found so many acronyms in Microsoft!
It’s interesting to work in this team because each of us comes up with so many ideas of how our project will look like. After a brainstorming session in Lau Pa Sat food court, we finally come up with an idea to design a special membership club for Microsoft Office 2010 genuine user. Then, we decided to divide our work to make it more effective, Salome doing deeper research on Generation Y, Zeff designing the flow of the presentation, and me on designing the survey for students. Too bad that Salome have to back to Malaysia until the presentation time, but no worries, thanks to Microsoft
Roundtable, we still can do our meeting seamlessly! Yeay!
Zeff also make a super-cool design on our presentation, here is the glimpse of how our presentation looks like:
When it comes to our presentation day, we’re all so nervous, because the judges were the senior leadership team of BMO, and Tracey Fellows herself! Some of us even couldn’t eat lunch before the presentation, Zeff’s hands are shaking during the presentation, and my hands are very cold! With Salome joining us through conference call, we finally present it, with confetti burst on the end on the presentation! The judges are very enthusiast to ask us question on Indonesia and Malaysia market.
I’d say it’s a tough competition as all of the teams are doing great on their project, but TIARA Team is lucky to get the first place on Microsoft Protégé South East Asia 2011. Tracey comments on us: “TIARA Team gives us the research necessary and gives a bold idea based on it”. We definitely learn many things from this competition, especially on how to work in a team from different background, and present ideas to leadership team. I hope you enjoy this blog, see you again on next year Microsoft Protégé!
By Akhmad Rahadian Hutomo
Be Your Future 